Food Fridays: Why Filipinos Love This Crabby ‘Cockroach’

Zamboanga City, the Philippines—The coastal, southern Philippine city of Zamboanga has plenty of culinary flare, but it’s gotten a leg up on other parts of the country with a dish made from a fleshy cockroach-like crab known as curacha.

Josephine Cuneta/The Wall Street Journal

Curacha crab cooked in a coconut milk sauce with spices, a signature recipe from Alavar Seafood restaurant in Zamboanga City.

The crustacean gained fame in Vitali, Zamboanga’s seafood capital and the place where Alavar Seafood Restaurant created its signature Curacha Alavar, crab bathed in a blend of coconut milk and spices.

From humble beginnings as a food stall in the 1970s, Alavar’s morphed into a fine dining restaurant housed in the ancestral home of founder Teresa Alavar. Ms. Alavar and her husband, Miguel, introduced the curacha crab that has been key to the restaurant’s success by pairing it with Alavar sauce, acoconut milk concoction whose recipe remains a tightly guarded secret.

Advertisement

The curacha used in the dish is a cross between a large sea crab and a big spiny lobster. Its name means “cockroach” because the small, hairy legs of the crab have a similar appearance to the legs of the insect.

Bright red in color, the curacha retains its hue even after being cooked. It is usually steamed or boiled to preserve its flavor, which is slightly stronger than that of more traditional crab meats.

Unlike most crabs, whose meat is mostly found in their claws, the curacha’s meat is found in its body. Because the crabs are very large, they are often steamed whole or cut into quarters, along with onions, scallions or garlic to infuse the meat with flavor.

The legs and claws, which do not contain much meat, can be removed and cooked separately. Another way of cooking the crab is to halve or quarter it and then fry it with chilies, garlic and ginger. The most popular method, however, is to steam or boil the crab in a lightly flavored sauce that includes garlic, ginger, salt and pepper.

Josephine Cuneta/The Wall Street Journal

Marissa Alavar Alfaro and her husband Pedro run Alavar Seafood Restaurant in the southern Philippines. The restaurant is famed for creating the Curacha Alavar.

The curacha is plentiful in the waters around Sulu, where it is indigenous, says Marissa Alfaro, Teresa’s and Miguel’s daughter and the one currently running the restaurant. Fishermen keep them in cages under the seabed until they’re ready for sale, she says. Prices vary between 450 to 650 pesos per kilo ($10-14.60).

Over the past three decades, Alavar’s has become a source of culinary pride in Zamboanga. All of the Alavar’s eight children have helped operate and manage the restaurant at some point. Today, Marissa takes care of the food preparation while her husband, Pedro, procures each day’s fresh catch.

Last September a group of Muslim rebels laid siege to Zamboanga during a weeks’ long battle with government forces. The Alfaro’s were forced to close the restaurant, but they catered meals for President Benigno Aquino III and other government officials who poured into Zamboanga to negotiate an end to the conflict.

Ms. Alfaro said it was difficult to continue cooking while listening to the exchange of gunfire. A month after peace returned to the city, she said the restaurant had recovered its losses.

As word of the famous Curacha Alavar has spread, so has the restaurant’s operations. The Alfaro’s have been selling the dish at the Salcedo and Legazpi markets in Makati, Manila’s financial district, for five years now.

In 1995, Alavar’s moved from the coast to Tetuan, smack in the center of Zamboanga. Behind the restaurant sits an aviary and the house where the Alfaros live. Other specialties now include giant prawns in lemon butter, succulent grilled blue marlin belly and steamed imbao (white shellfish) with garlic and butter sauce.

About Southeast Asia Real Time

Indonesia Real Time provides analysis and insight into the region, which includes Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Brunei. Contact the editors at SEAsia@wsj.com.

E-commerce sites and mobile apps are drawing on data they’ve collected from users to better understand how and when people shop during the Islamic holy month. Here’s a look at some of what they’ve discovered.

All that burning rubbish in Indonesia may be taking its toll, with nearly a quarter of people surveyed in a recent poll saying waste management was the most prominent environmental issue in the country.